Another selfish and tasteless display by Golden Palace

27.02.2006

Online casino group Golden Palace is notorious for silly, tasteless and entirely self-interested publicity stunts, ranging from saddling babies with its brand name to disrupting the running of the bulls in Pamplona, and interrupting the Athens Olympics to paying ridiculous eBay prices for tatty bits of toast.

This week they were at it again, but they may have overstepped the boundary lines laid down by the company's licensing jurisdiction, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission after their last invasion of the Olympics in 2004.

The target this time was the bronze medal finals for the curling event at the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. The U.S. and Great Britain were set to battle it out in an event that even IOC President Jacques Rogge attended.

During the fifth end break, a half naked, overweight and rather seedy looking individual with "Golden Palace" body-painted on his chest did a contrived streak and was removed from the venue. It didn't end there, however because another rather chubby individual wearing a Golden Palace emblazoned T-shirt also interrupted the closing ceremonies with scant regard for the gravity of the moment.

It's all become a bit old hat, but this company keeps plugging away at it, showing little real creative imagination. The question on everyone's lips now, however is what will the KGC do about this flagrant disregard of previous disciplinary rulings?

These arose from a similar incident which took place at the Athens Olympics in 2004. Golden Palace was fined an undisclosed amount (see previous reports and http://www.kahnawake.com/gamingcommission) following numerous complaints to the KGC about the incident. The Commission distanced itself from this type of conduct and after investigating the incident made a ruling that:

1. Golden Palace will not use, promote, encourage or fund this type of 'marketing' ever again, and

2. Given the seriousness of the incident and the negative effect it has had on the community's reputation, Golden Palace will make a substantial donation to Kahnawake organizations to be identified by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake.

Barely two years on, Golden Palace is blatantly flouting these findings and its agreement to eschew this type of behaviour going forward.